Susan Marshall & Company's "The Most Dangerous Room in the House" -- which has its world premiere tonight in the Moore Theater at the Hopkins Center -- is a surreal dance production that may leave student audiences fascinated but confused. It's two parts interpretive dance, one part spoken word and 100 percent odd.
In the past, Susan Marshall has been described as one of the foremost choreographers working today and that her pieces grab hold of the audience with their grace and power. Her company has performed over 25 works since 1983 and has won numerous awards, including five New York Dance and Performance Awards.
"The Most Dangerous Room in the House" was co-commissioned by the Brooklyn Academy of Music and the Hopkins Center.
The one-hour and five-minute performance of "The Most Dangerous Room in the House" is far stranger than it is beautiful. Marshall said before yesterday's dress rehearsal that the piece is about "becoming a mother, being pregnant with a son and wondering how you can protect someone," and deals "a lot with chaos and free-floating fear."
Unlike typical interpretive dance, Marshall chooses to use motions that are more like real-life gestures than fluid dancing. The set is minimalist, with only two chairs and two white backdrops seen in the performance.
Difficult to understand, the work starts with violent images of women throwing themselves against a white backdrop and set to unnerving music by composer David Lang. A middle-aged woman, undoubtedly wrestling with the implications of introducing a child into the world and controlling her daughters, counts aloud randomly.
The piece continues as the older woman fights feelings of being lost, trapped and isolated. She often appears to be visibly searching for something and frequently pushes against a white backdrop as though she is attempting to escape. She screams and yells "No" throughout the performance, again trying to evade an unknown evil.
Lang's music is erratic and excruciatingly repetitive, sometimes imitating work by Phillip Glass, who has composed for Marshall before.
All scenes are very effeminate, giving a delicate feel to most of the performance despite the jerking and twisting motions throughout. This atmosphere certainly encapsulates Marshall's universe which she describes as "a controlled, private world surrounded by a frightening and seemingly chaotic outer world." But, the lack of a dominating male presence from beginning to end may alienate some audience members.
Marshall plays with language in the work, and in a particularly memorable scene twists the sentence, "The waiter's knife split the melon," into gibberish and uses the words to mold a metaphor for a Caesarean section. She also uses language when various dancers recite passages from a storybook, forming an eerie ambiance to the piece.
Finally, the piece comes to a close in a mellow and attractive scene with a young daughter and boyfriend lying in provocative and twisted positions on a backdrop converted into a ramp. The middle-aged woman appears to have resolved her difficulties when a daughter embraces her. She describes a tranquil picnic scene and conveys a feeling of tired contentment.
In short, "The Most Dangerous Room in the House" may appeal to Dartmouth students especially interested in modern dance but will not appeal to everyone. The abstract nature of the piece will definitely make the piece unfriendly to many viewers.
